ibanezfandomcom-20200223-history
Forum:Discussion on renaming catalog articles
Editor's note: the following conversation is being copied here from F STOP EDITING THE CATEGORIES PLZ where it was hastily posted in order to grab attention. It came about as a result of actions taken after this discussion took place. ---- It doesn't work as expected, the initial "all categories at one place" was WAAAY better, thanks. --KainTGC (talk) 19:59, May 26, 2016 (UTC) :Sorry, didn't see this note until I'd completed the 2012 catalogs. What is it about the new structure that you dislike? \m/ DeeJayKTalk! 21:15, May 26, 2016 (UTC) ::Well, the whole structure itself. It was so easy to have ALL pages gathered at one place, but now catalogs are hidden behind tons of sub-sub-sub categories. click clic click to reach one, click click click to go back and click click click to open another one. The idea on the paper was nice but in fact it doesn't work as expected. At least we've tried. ::Another approach that would work a better way, would be to move all pages in their old "Ibanez catalogs" as before, but simply renaming them: 2012 USA Catalog, 2016 NA Catalog, etc. using "JP USA EU NA" exclusively. And "2012 GIO Catalog" (not mentioning Asia at all, it's implicit). --KainTGC (talk) 21:30, May 26, 2016 (UTC) :::Actually, I kinda like the order, but then I've already outed myself as a hierarchical structure nerd. But since I don't really ever envision myself USING these categories once the pages are renamed, I'm not going to fight you on the category structures. :::As far as the article names, is there a reason why you prefer using the two-letter codes in place of full names? To me that seems like just the sort of jargon we'd like to avoid, particularly in article names. I've taken the approach of trying to mirror relatively closely the catalog names provided by Ibanez, except for moving the year and geographic area to the front of the name. The reason I called them "electric guitar" catalog is that there are also acoustic catalogs we will presumably (very eventually) want to add. I realize that these "electric guitar" catalogs also include electrics basses (which are after all bass guitars), amps and electronics; I considered calling them "Ibanez electrics" catalogs, but that doesn't seem any clearer. :::And as you go back in time the naming and organizing principles of the catalogs continues to change. I figure that it might be simplest if we just try to adapt Ibanez's catalog names rather than try to impose some new structure which will be increasingly ill-fitting as we go backwards. \m/ DeeJayKTalk! 21:50, May 26, 2016 (UTC) :::Can we finish the discussion and AGREE on a naming convention before you go about implementing your idea? I strongly disagree with your "YEAR JP/EU/US catalog" approach for the reasons outlined above. \m/ DeeJayKTalk! 22:00, May 26, 2016 (UTC) :::These pages have a lot of inter-connected links and changing the names is a bit of a pain in the ass. Let's not make more work for ourselves by jumping the gun. \m/ DeeJayKTalk! 22:14, May 26, 2016 (UTC) ::::I've edited a few pages with this "2 letters only" approach, just to see how it looks, to see if it's better or worse. Well, I'm not especially fan of it. I was expecting it to be much more readable but in fact it looks even more confusing. Wrong move. ::::I'm still convinced that using the official name is not the better approach, using the year, or the area at the beginning would greatly help to sort the catalogs by name; when I created the catalogs pages I used "Full Line Catalog for AREA YEAR" every time because it was easier to read than all the fancy names Ibanez usually gives to his catalogs. ::::Right now, we should find an agreement on how to name these catalogs. My original "Full line catalog area year" was so simple, why changing it? --KainTGC (talk) 22:18, May 26, 2016 (UTC) :::::I don't like the original naming convention for a variety of reasons: :::::#Having so many articles start with the same long text string makes navigating to these pages using the search functionality cumbersome (at best) :::::#What does "full line catalog" really mean? (I get it, but it's not something that seems immediately obvious to a casual user). :::::#They're not TRULY 'full line' catalogs (despite what Ibanez calls them) since they don't include any acoustic instruments :::::#Over-capitalization. There's no reason why Every Word In These Titles should be capitalized. :::::My proposal is this: " catalog". I realize that this can make for some looooong article names, but I'm okay with that since I can find the articles quickly by just typing the year in the search box and looking at the drop-down list. This approach remains flexible as the scope of the catalogs changes (as it does as we go back in time), it allows us to eventually add the acoustic catalogs without going back and renaming all of these articles and it improves the usability of the site vis-a-vis search. As I said before, I'll let you sort out the categories for yourself as that is your bailiwick. \m/ DeeJayKTalk! 22:33, May 26, 2016 (UTC) ::::::I was really upset when I saw the names changed to "2012 EU electric guitar catalog". And you changed it *everywhere*, not only the pages names themselves but the links inside the pages as well. Didn't even had time to say a word about it. And NO, I firmly disagree on adding everything and nothing (hollow body/bass/acoustic): this wiki is A SOLID BODY IBANEZ MODELS FROM 1987 ONWARDS. Capitals/bold intended. These past days you are adding "solid body electric guitar" everywhere in the pages. I disagree. You are currently going on your own, personal crusade but I can't/won't follow you here. This wiki was not intended to be this in the first place, and it's pure madness. A brother-site wiki dedicated to the hollow body models and bass and amps and TS-9 if you want (I'll help you here, no problem), but not THIS wiki. Please. --KainTGC (talk) 22:44, May 26, 2016 (UTC) I'm a bit confused here. There's a lot to unpack in your response, and it seems like this is about a more than just a discussion around a new naming convention for the catalog articles. Let me first address your tangential concerns and then try to steer back to the topic at hand. First off, if my actions have offended or annoyed you, I wholeheartedly apologize that certainly was never my intention. As to your concerns re: the scope of the wiki. I feel like I've been pretty clear and consistent that my desire is that one day (perhaps in the very distant future) this wiki will contain information on all things Ibanez. I've also tried to be very clear that the current focus is and will remain on assembling as much information as can be found related to solid body guitars. Not until that (monumental) task is in hand do I intend personally to add content on anything else. That said, if someone were to happen to show up on the site one day who wanted to contribute and had an interest solely in, for example, hollow body electrics to the exclusion of all else, I would certainly do what I could to encourage that person to undertake the task of adding that scope. I don't see a reason why this site needs to always and forever be limited to solid body guitars from '87 forward. I also don't understand why you feel that other topics could and should NEVER be included in this wiki, but only in a sibling site. I'm asking this honestly. Perhaps I'm naive and there is some limit to the scope that can be covered in one site for a reason that I am not aware of. These are all things that can be discussed in due time — I don't anticipate we'll actually "finish" the solid-body task for many months or (more likely) years. It's certainly not like you're going to wake up tomorrow or next week and see a bunch of new pages here on Ibanez basses. Re: my "personal crusade" towards increasing the site scope as described in the previous paragraph, which consists primarily, I assume, of my addition of "bodytype = Solid body" to numerous speclists recently. My thinking there is that when (if?) we get to the point that we wish to expand the scope of the site beyond solid body guitars it will be nice at that point to have this parameter added for all the existing solid body models. So, why not simply add it NOW to these pages whenever I am already editing them to avoid having to come back in the future. I realize that this is planning for a distant, unsure future and is perhaps putting the cart before the horse. My intention was that if anyone spoke up against this addition to the speclist, it would be dead simple to edit the speclist code itself to simply suppress the display of this attribute for solid body models. If you feel that action is appropriate, I would be happy to make it so. I also feel like you feel that I made the decision to start adding this parameter without any discussion or warning (hence the "personal crusade"). If indeed that is how you feel, you have a point there. For the most part I've tried to be consistent in discussing changes like this prior to implementing them, but I did not do that in this case. If that is what is bugging you, I will certainly endeavor to do a better job of discussing similar changes in the future. Now that we've gotten all THAT out in the air (which is not to say resolved), let's circle back to the topic that initiated this kerfluffle. As to the notion of renaming the catalog articles, I'm confused as to why you reacted as though this change was unexpected, given that we had had an explicit discussion on the topic prior to my implementing the change. I agree that what I implemented as far as the article names didn't completely match the convention I had laid out, but the basic framework was certainly established. I've explained above the reasons why I made the particular changes I made. My revised proposal for the naming convention is also posted above, if you'd like to speak to its particular merits or deficiencies. As to changing the links to these pages once the name is changed, I'm a bit confused as to what purpose is achieved by NOT doing that. Why should we maintain links that rely on a redirect? Redirects certainly have their purposes, and they definitely make these types of article name changes simpler to implement and less disruptive, but in my opinion the "best practice" is to avoid relying on redirects more than necessary. It seems that you have some attachment to the "Full Line Catalog for Japan 2013" convention. That's perfectly understandable as these articles are your brainchild. Please help me understand whether you would be open to ANY change to this naming convention and if so, WHAT changes. Are there particular elements having to do with verbiage or the order of information in the name that you simply can't support changing? Do these existing names have particular strengths that I am not seeing that outweigh my concerns with them that I've enumerated above? If so, please help me understand what those strengths are. Frankly, if I had known that this change would have blown up like this, I probably just would have kept my mouth shut from the beginning. I hope that we can resolve this issue and put the whole thing behind us quickly because working with you on this site has been enjoyable and I would like our collaboration to continue. To that end, if you see me doing things that annoy you (e.g. the "Solid body" thing), please don't hesitate to let me know BEFORE they turn into resentments. Perhaps the new "chat" feature can be a good forum for these types of off-the-cuff discussions. Otherwise, feel free to post something on my "message wall" (or whatever the User Talk page is called now), or email me or post something on the Facebook group, or whatever. Anyway, off to bed, I'll check in with you tomorrow (which is today for you). \m/ DeeJayKTalk! 05:54, May 27, 2016 (UTC) :Thank you for your constructive and moderate reply (as always!), I don't feel "offended" or anything bad. I would said "afraid/frightened" are the proper words here. Yes, it goes a little further than the simple "catalogs renaming" which was the straw that broke the camel's bag here (is it the correct saying in english?). Let's see, first, the general direction of this wiki, 2nd, the catalogs renaming: :*Both of us are very motivated and we are not afraid of huge and tedious tasks, but here I begin to share "None of your business" opinion who didn't want such massive changes on the wiki: I've got a nice boat to go fishing on Sunday, but I'll transform it into a three-mast vessel of the XVIIth century. Yes but no, my poor little boat was not intended to become something that huge, and that different. Moreover, there's more than enough work at the moment to consolidate the foundations (like navigation, portals, etc), so adding such a vast amount of contents looks out-of-purpose, or inappropriate, to me. "To put the cart before the horses" like you said. :*I was with you completely, and 100% agreed to change the categories to classify the catalogs by year and by name, I CAN'T be angry at you for this (all the more than we discussed it before). Changing the name itself, 2 points: (1) you really envision the adding of the acoustic/bass/amps/pedals sections to this wiki, thus the "electric guitar" added to the catalogs name. Well, I do not wish to expand the wiki in such a direction as I said above, thus my epidermic reaction. (2) Looking backwards, the catalogs were fine in the first place, adding sub-categories to them was a mistake (that why I used a capital-letter-warning, and the "F" was not the "F word" of course, just a way to make it appear under the "F" letter so you could see it ASAP). I'm not in love with "Full Line catalogs XXX" either, but at least it worked fine. When I see the non-yet-edited pages, I feel so comfortable with them, and the way they are classified. I would suggest a naming like "2013 catalog for Japan". It is short, effective. And IN THE FUTURE (after many many discussions and brainstorm) we may change it to "2013 catalog for Japan (electric)" -no need to specify "electric guitars", short names are better when they are distributed over the 3 columns inside the category. Next, we will have "2013 catalog for Japan (acoustic)", and (parts) and (pedals)... Such a "basic" name structure looks fine, everything will be classified properly. But BEFORE we add various ibanez-related content, I would suggest to stick to the simple "2013 catalog for Japan", period. One day at a time. :I guess you are a little disappointed with my overall reaction. You wish the best for this wiki (so do me) and you were expecting me (=all users) to follow you. But the expansion you envision comes way too early. This time it goes way further than simply changing the index page or managing categories/portals a better way. By experience I've seen so many fan-sites and wikis (most were one-man-army-projects like here), starting to crumble and collapse because the guy was the frog that wished to become as huge as the ox, and exploded (Jean de la Fontaine's fable). Before everything goes crazy and out-of-control on this wiki, I SIMPLY want to make the "electric guitar solid body call that what you want" per-fect. That means documenting the missing models (easy, we are really good at it) ^^ but also the whole "navigation and categories and portals things". Because we HAVE to cope with it and it comes BEFORE any vision of expansion or anything. And I'm really not sure such an expansion is needed/wished by the majority. :Have a good night! (or die trying to, I couldn't find sleep at all with all these ideas fighting inside my head) ^^" --KainTGC (talk) 12:38, May 27, 2016 (UTC) ::Thank you for your detailed response. It's good to understand where you are coming from. As to your fears, I would urge you not to confuse planning for expansion with actually starting to implement that expansion. I'll I'm trying to do is lay the groundwork for the potentiality that the scope of the wiki may increase at some point in the future, I'm not actually increasing the scope (at least not as I see it). My thinking is that if there are small changes I can make now that will simplify things for my future self, then why not do them (e.g. all the "solid body" stuff). ::While I understand your "turning a dinghy into an aircraft carrier" analogy, I'm not sure that it's really an apt description of the way a wiki functions or is built. I don't see any barriers to this site eventually becoming one that covers more scope (except for the obvious limits on the time myself and others are willing to devote to that task), as one would obviously encounter in your physical world example. Also this "vision" of the site is not something that I''' developed, it was clearly outlined by the site's founder and articulated by him as far back as 2010 (see here). As such it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the site. I acknowledge your fear of this issue, but I don't understand it. ::I'm trying to take a midful approach with the "bigger picture" stuff such as coming up with a naming convention for these catalog articles. If we're going to change the names, why would we want to adopt a strategy that would (or could) mean that we'd have to come back and do it all again at some later date? Hence my suggestion for a naming structure that reflects that the catalogs we've added to date don't include any acoustic instruments. ::To use another analogy, if I were planning to build a city on some newly discovered piece of land, I might (if I were thoughtful) set aside some space in my tiny village to accommodate things like highways, public transit, parks, etc., that are not currently being built (or even really planned) now, but may some day be desired. I would see such an act merely as thoughtful planning, although I suppose others could interpret it as delusions of grandeur. ::To put it plainly, I don't have any specific plan or timeline to transform this wiki into something that covers more than just solid body electric guitars. I don't know how much more simply I can state that. That said, I don't want to make decisions now that needlessly place limits on the potential growth of the site. ::As to your assertion that I expect people to fall in line with my plans for the site, that has never been my expectation. I've worked with enough people in my life to understand that everyone has his own opinions and point-of-view. My intention is to simply make proposals and work with others to massage them into something that can work for everyone. That's what I've tried to do in this particular case, but it seems as though that's not the way my actions have been perceived. I'll take that as a failing on my part. I've never tried to be an imperious leader who imposed change based on my whim, but I'll take your feedback as a suggestion that I need to re-examine my actions in the future. ::To put a bow on the original topic, unless we can come up with a solution for these page names that improves the ability to find the pages via the search functionality (which was the original driver for this initiative) and also accommodate the possibility of future growth in scope without rework, then there's simply no point in making any change. I can just learn to live with the article titles as they exist. \m/ '''DeeJayKTalk! 14:43, May 27, 2016 (UTC)